


Inspiration

by naiadwrites



Series: You Are Never Alone [2]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Bad Wolf, F/M, Gallifrey, Rebuilding, ten/rose kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-16
Updated: 2014-10-16
Packaged: 2018-02-21 10:13:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2464538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naiadwrites/pseuds/naiadwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Pete's World, Gallifrey still exists, though it's never been home to a Time Lord. At the end of the 11th, only truth can be spoken. Before the Fall, one last meeting must take place, so that the future can be born. Tentoo/Rose, Eleven/River. (Ignores last Christmas episode)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time playing with Dr. Who, and it's such a detailed universe I'm very worried that I missed something in my research. If I've made a glaring error, I would like to fix it, so please review and tell me off. I'm a big girl and I can take it.  
> Many many thanks to the awesome TheDoctor10_11 for the beta and revised clarity! I would be incomprehensible without her!

"Well?" Rose Tyler-Noble tapped her foot on the metal grating and fixed her husband with an impatient glare. "Aren't we going out?"

Doctor Sean Tyler-Noble stared at the bright white insides of the slightly-too-small doors of their growing TARDIS. "I'm contemplating the methods of removing a sticky bandage. One could take Maya's method of quick and fast, or Matt's slow, methodical wearing away at the adhesive until the thing falls off. Or there's the method on Fasaigi III, where they stand on their heads and…"

"Doctor! You're babbling, which you know I love, but right now…" She gave him a half grin, shaking her head and breathing out a sigh. "With their knack for finding trouble, you can surely study the kids plaster preferences when we are back on Earth. Right now we are here, on Galli…"

"Coordinates 10-0-11-0-0 by 0-2!" the Doctor interrupted quickly. He still could not quite face the name of the planet that he'd destroyed uttering and completely, locked out of time and silenced forever. "There should be nothing here in the Kasterborous System, Rose. Nothing but a black smear of nothingness."

She stroked his arm lovingly, and he had no doubt that she would have taken him into an embrace. He'd have gladly accepted it, returned it, but he felt so poised on the knife's edge of giving up he was loath to get close to her, worried that he'd lose his considerable nerve, ignore his simmering drive for exploration and simply drag his wife back into their bedroom to continue the celebration of their tenth wedding anniversary.

She smiled at him wild and feral, that tongue between her teeth smile that made him flush with heat. "Naughty, naughty, luv. And if this weren't also our first trip off Earth in the new TARDIS and there was the distinct smell of the Bad Wolf about this entire mess, I'd be more than happy to take you up on the offer…"

"I said that last bit out loud, didn't I?"

"Nah, yer gob isn't to blame this time, luv. My talents seem to be getting better lately, and you weren't exactly thinking quiet-like. And those beautiful eyes weren't exactly focused on my face!"

He blushed pink, something that the full-Time Lord Doctor never would have had to deal with, but something he'd grown resigned to. Especially when Rose giggled and blushed right back at him, despite eleven years of exploring every inch of each other, acres of skin and miles of mind alike. He felt like in her body, mind and soul he'd traversed another universe. A universe just as vast and amazing as in all his many regenerations before he'd ever known her. He still ached in sadness for his other self who'd lost her. And sometimes in fear what he could still lose her.

_‘I'd stay with you. You know that. You are my forever.’_

It was faint, but her thoughts were a clear sweet stream in the caverns of his empty mind, filling him with hope and happiness. Where once he'd been so utterly alone, he had his Rose, and though still on Earth, in another galaxy, Maya and Matthew were bright dots of restless energy, tied to him through more than bonds of blood, but love like he'd never known.

_‘Thank you so much, my Rose.’_

She tilted her head at him with a smile, and he pressed a kiss to her lips, drawing from her own indomitable courage.

"Well then, wife of mine. Shall we go out and see if we can find trouble?"

"Allons-y!" she declared in her atrocious French, but he wrinkled his nose and pushed open the doors, ducked his head and stepped out into a landscape that really shouldn't be there at all.

The pebbles under his feet felt the same as they had when he was newly loomed. The squeeze of Rose's hand in his was the only thing keeping him tethered to reality as they both took in the view of the silver-leaved trees than chimed softly in the dry breeze of an orange-gold double sunrise.

“Empty.” His voice was a mix of sorrow and awe and loneliness so ancient and profound that it was simply more than human.

“But at least something's here. And who knows what happens in its future? We haven’t mapped…” Rose stopped suddenly and shook her head, wrapping her arms around him and pressing her cheek against his shoulder. “I’m glad I could see it. I’m glad that we came. It truly is a beautiful planet."

He tipped his head to rest against his wife’s dark blonde hair and looked out toward what would have been called the Mountains of Solace and Solitude. No judgmental Council to pity him his newfound demi-humanity, no Citadel, no Academy, no Eye of Harmony, no Untempered….was there? He swallowed thickly, and for a moment he was filled to the brim with the desire to climb back into their far too smooth and stable baby TARDIS and run back to the simple pleasures of Pete’s World and their two clever, troublemaking children.

In another universe, in another lifetime, he’d looked out into the Untempered Schism and into the Time Vortex, and he’d been filled, hearts and soul, with that desire to run that had made him the rogue Time Lord, an object of alternating derision and fear — and ultimately the death of his people and world. He walked toward where it had once glimmered in shades of impossible infrared and glaring ultraviolet, hovered there and not there in the way that drew you in until you were forced to confront the impossible nature of reality.

“Where are we going, Doctor?” Her voice was falsely calm, but she stared at the glowing edges of the sky before them with a fearless resolution that made her the most beautiful thing in his universe.

He paused. Both he and Rose were more than human. He still part-Time Lord, and she altered by the Bad Wolf. But could either of them survive looking into the Untempered Schism? Would they collapse in death, or share insanity?

"I ran away from a tear in reality once. Just as I've run my entire life — until I chose you." He took a deep breath, but she knew him too well.

"The Untempered Schism. It exists in this universe?" Her voice was filled with awe and she stepped forward, seemingly drawn to it just as much as he was. And why not? If she was still part of whatever Bad Wolf was, what better home for such an entity than the heart of madness that had always lain at the core of Gallifreyan identity?

"It shouldn't. I thought I'd destroyed it all, wiped everything out of creation across every conceivable…"

She put a finger to his lips. "Shush. You may be the Oncoming Storm and the Dealer of Death and whatnot, but you are not all powerful. You did what you had to save a universe. But this is another universe entirely."

He nodded, the argument an old one between them. "A new beginning."

His eyes caught sight of movement and they narrowed in suspicion. There was a figure crawling out of the edge of the Schism. Impossible. "The TARDIS showed no sentient life signs on this planet."

"Well, it did the best it could. It still seems rather hollow though. Something's missing. It could have…"

"The scanners are fully functional. He wasn't there a few minutes ago."

She followed his line of sight and gasped. "Doctor!"

"Oh, it must be bad. Things always go cock-eyed when I'm wearing a cowboy hat. And a cowboy hat with a bow tie! And tweed. I bet he even wears braces. What is this one thinking?”


	2. Two

The Bad Wolf had been pawing at the edges of her mind for weeks, leaving her restless and more than eager for their first trip on the new TARDIS. Even if this TARDIS didn't feel quite right yet.

Her Wolf had been quiet for years, with the exceptions of an odd congratulatory growl of smug pride at the birth of each of their children. She'd once felt that her mind would never be entirely human again, as Bad Wolf had nipped at her heels and scratched at her dreams constantly through the years she'd spent separated from her Doctor by a universe. It was the Bad Wolf that let her survive the Cannon over and over. The Bad Wolf that let her survive what a normal human could not. She'd thought that would be enough, when she found him, to make her a suitable mate for a Time Lord, that being more than human would make her enough for him. But she'd never gotten the chance to tell him before he'd dumped her back in Pete's World with himself.

And then the kiss, and then the fire, and the dream of wolves howling. She’d changed, just enough.

But her wolf had been silent then, content with the results. That silent approval, that as much as anything had let her start to truly believe that the copy — the half human Doctor that became her lover, and then her husband in a whirlwind of fights and marathon shags and brilliant swirling emotion — her partner was also truly her Doctor.

These past weeks of restlessness made her suspect. Then all “wolf” songs on the radio. The werewolf sightings in Scotland. The unexplainable popularity of that terrible movie series with the sparkly werewolves and the half-naked vampires. The odd golden glow in her daughter Maya's eyes. Something was up.

She felt the throb in that more-than-human part of her mind even before she'd followed the Doctor's gaze toward that shimmering, almost painfully attractive light. Then her eyes fell on the figure staggering on unsteady thin legs at the edge of the chasm — no, the Schism. The Untempered Schism that the Doctor had whispered about in the dark of the night when they lay together, bond wide open, too close to tell where one ended and one began, and he told her the secrets that lay in the dark of his eyes in every incarnation.

No one should survive that. Not without going insane.

No one could have climbed out of that.

But the Doctor had. Of course he had, the blighter.

"Doctor!" she cried, still unbelieving, and not sure who she was crying out for. Bad Wolf growled within her.

The figure inching closer and coming into focus was not her husband. Her Doctor’s mind was a warm purr in hers, like a contented cat on her mum's windowsill. But this other, he was the Doctor — the other version of him, past or present or future she had no idea. Time-y wimey and all that rubbish. But this was the only one who had spoken to her, when she was ripping through universes.

Thin and lanky and all done up in white bow tie and tails, familiar but not at all the same. He’d been standing outside of a wedding reception when she’d run out of the Void and into a hallway. He’d looked straight at her and she’d remembered his eyes — though they were green, not blue or brown. “It’s not the right time, Rose Tyler.” A mad, sad grin, but not the one she longed for. Still, very him. Some things never changed.

She’d wanted to stay. She’d seen, from a distance, almost every incarnation of him. The crickety one. The mad angry man in the impossibly awful coat. The poet. The schemer. The one who played a recorder. She’d seen them laugh and bluster and run, always running, with some friend at their side. The girl with the alien eyes and the sixties hair with the white-haired Doctor had seen her once and spoken as those eyes flashed gold, “It’s not time yet for the Bad Wolf.” She’d jumped away quickly, scared as she hadn’t been in years. But this young Doctor with the bow tie, he’d been the only Doctor to see her, speak to her. He’d known who she was.

He came after.

She could feel him in her mind as well, and it was bloody well hard enough getting used to her husband being there, and then their two kids on top of that, not to mention the Wolf that was her and not her. Adding anyone else was just too bloody crowded!

Just to add the vinegar, this one's mind was a discordant note, far too close in tone to her Doctor, but full of such deep pain and sorrow that her eyes were already tearing up.

Without realizing what she was doing, she stepped forward, one step — two — and then she began to run. Loping really, the Wolf howling in pain and triumph and worry. Her husband followed after a moment, and she wasn't sure if he was chasing her to stop her or trying to get to this other version of himself first. If she could feel the pain, he had to be drowning in it.

_Pain. He needs…I'm always yours, but he needs…  
…go, I understand._

This one was thin as a reed, worse than hers, but with big hair, curled at the front like a great big geek, and enough chin to sharpen an axe on. And he wore tweed this time, a battered bow tie, and then there was the cowboy hat. Odd, but somehow so very Doctor. And he needed someone. She didn't bother slowing down or taking no for an answer, she flung herself at him and embraced him, taking his weight as he almost collapsed into her arms, his frame so frail and light she thought one good puff of air would send him sailing back into that great abyss behind him. The Wolf throbbed golden at the edges of her mind, whimpering in concern.

"Rose Tyler…" he whispered, his voice gravelly. He still said her name just so, but it lacked the touch of awe that she'd heard from her own two Doctors. He knew her, but at a distance. The next Doctor, or even one after that. How long had it been?

"Three hundred forty six years, one month, two days and seventeen point three hours, and you’re still so beautiful." He grinned at her, finally returning her embrace before stepping back, heaving for breath. Of course he could hear her thoughts, drat him. With his respiratory bypass still functioning, she wondered at what he'd been through to be short of breath — something very rare in her two years with the Time Lord Doctor.

"Three hundred forty six years…." She swallowed. Lifetimes. Her own Doctor skittered to a halt, staring with wide brown eyes at his new face — the one he would never have. His mind felt uneasy, running too fast her to quite comprehend, Bad Wolf augments or no. He surely could see the timelines bending around the three of them in ways she couldn't even imagine.

Her husband was gasping a bit for breath when he finally spoke. "Eleven years, two months, eight days and three point six hours." He looked at Rose with a smile, "Two children, a baby TARDIS, and a house with doors as well. No carpets or mortgage though — we're rather well off." He jammed his hands in the pockets of his khakis and smiled smugly at the alien who had given Rose up.

"Still rude and not ginger, just like me." The Time Lord laughed, but that turned into a cough, and swirls of golden light crept through the gaps between his fingers as he covered his mouth with his hand.

"You're dying again!" Rose cried out, suddenly terrified.

"Oi, I just breeze through these faces like nothing, don't I? I…you've only got thirteen5t you know!" Rose looked at her husband and the lines in his forehead revealed just how worried he really was for the other Doctor.

A sorrowful laugh creaked out of the throat of the Time Lord. "She gave me more, you know, gave me all of hers left. I don't know if I'll ever die now." His eyes were dry, but Rose was very suspicious that the only reason he wasn't crying is because he had no tears left in him.

"Who did, Doctor? Who gave you more..?"

"River Song," the human Doctor whispered, his eyes wide. "She really did know your name, was she going to be….?"

Rose blinked, a flash of jealousy flaring bright in her mind before both she and her Wolf crushed it under a mental heel. She remembered the other wolf. The voice that laid claim to one Doctor, while assuring her that the man who would become her husband was hers. She’d always wondered if her dream was a fantasy of her quasi-regeneration, or seeing within the Bad Wolf. Now she knew. "River Song, your wife, she was a Time Lady?"

The Time Lord smiled sadly, looking at her with green eyes that she instantly recognizes and yet are completely unfamiliar. "You always were terribly brilliant, Rose Tyler." He sighed softly.

"Yes, River Song, through a series of incredible events, was a bit of a Time Lady. The very last one. And yes, she's…she was my wife." His voice was hoarse and he coughed golden sparks again. Rose could feel the Wolf respond to the flavor of that energy, whimpering sadly on the edges of her soul as the Doctor muttered sadly, "My wonderful, mad, backwards wife."

"…who I…you…we met the day she died," her Doctor blurted out and Rose glared at her husband for being rude once again, but she already knew the story. Her dream and that fractured tale had given her hope that the Time Lord who'd left her on that beach in Bad Wolf Bay would not be entirely alone once Donna was gone.

The fully-Time Lord Doctor turned an oddly exultant smile at them both as his eyes glittered that unknown green. "Yes, but you see, I'd already seen the ending — the part that breaks me. It let me revel in the rest, the juicy middle, the rapturously clever and horrible beginning. It let me love her, because I had already thought I lost her. But I haven't lost all of her."

In a burst of frenetic energy, he unslung the backpack he'd been wearing and placed it on to the sandy ground with infinite care, like it contained the most precious items in the universe.

Perhaps it did. His fingers went to the zip — long fingers that were different and yet eerily similar to those of her husband.

Her husband had other things on his mind. "Where did you ever find a backpack in the shape of your TARDIS?"

Rose blinked and yes, in fact, the backpack was a blue police box. "Oh, we're terribly famous on Starvane VI, I'll have you know. They seem to be rather immune to perception filters and River and I did manage to cure that nasty plague and defeat those terrorists in one fell swoop!" The new new new Doctor's eyes darted over to their own TARDIS, sitting unimaginative in the distance as a large reddish boulder. "Oh, your chameleon circuits are still working! Brilliant! Still I wouldn't give up my beautiful blue box for all the tea on Starvane VI!"

Rose felt a pang — she missed her old TARDIS with a visceral pain, and she knew her Doctor still had nightmares of the wrenching pain of losing his oldest, dearest partner. He said that she was worth the loss, but the new TARDIS just didn't feel the same. Her husband reached out to take her hand, his eyes still locked on the contents of that backpack.

Another cough and a deep steadying breath, and the Time Lord looked up at them with a smile like a magician revealing his greatest, most magnificent trick. He pulled a cube of glowing blue out of the pack on the dusty ground. He held it reverently, lovingly, and everywhere his fingers touched, swirls of light seemed to stroke at his fingers in sad whorls and spirals. Rose was mesmerized. In the back of her mind she swore she heard deep feminine laughter, achingly sad — yet not without the slightly trace of hope and curiosity.

Rose saw a trace of awe in the tears that finally escape from the corner of this Doctor's eyes. "This, this is my wife. This is River Song."


	3. Three

There’d been a rift, you see. Smack dab in the middle of a rock slide off the edge of the High Plains of Trenzalore, there’d been a Rift. The Rift’s light set aglow an ancient road sign, leaning haphazardly among the fallen rocks and covered with graffiti.

Bad Wolf Road 1.0 km, Sweetie Lane, 1.1 km

Hard to miss, that. And so he knew. He knew what he could do. He could smell it in the very air of this cursed place. He was dying, and he had just enough time. Maybe.

Back into the TARDIS once again, perhaps for the last time. She was damaged and her navigation systems were almost completely shriveled, their growth medium gone and not enough time to regrow the necessary bits or cobble together mechanical replacements. But Sexy could do it this.

It had been Emergency Program Omega for a hundred years. After that last regeneration, this time he had a plan. He’d lived a bit longer than he’d expected, but it was time. If he was dying, dying for the very last time, he would save her. Get to the Library, download her echo, and save her for what she was meant to be.

As he bumped along with his oldest friend through the time vortex, he clutched the amber in his pocket and felt the burn of his death curling in his liver. The nannites were still contained — but not for long. He would have to regenerate soon. But not before one last trip to see his River.

He remembered this time to turn off the breaks, and he arrived deep in the library core minutes after he’d left, a lifetime ago. He didn’t look at the empty chair. He couldn’t. His sonic wasn’t enough this time to keep her ghost, that’s why he’d given her a special one long ago, made for that precious purpose. But just a sonic wouldn’t do to keep her. Not for what he had planned. He pulled out the Ridelian memory cube and with a couple of quick connections he’d done in his mind twelve thousand six hundred and three times, he downloaded her memories, the last bits of her soul, into his little blue cube, one already infused with psychic protections and a matrix of his own memories of every moment they had shared.

He couldn’t bring her back to life. It was a fixed point, and there was no clever way out — he’d been too stupid in his last life, and far more stupid in this one. But he could give her something profoundly wonderful.

Back to the TARDIS and full reverse, and sparks lit the console ablaze and nearly blinded him. A hard landing whipped him against a support strut and his ribs pushed hard against his upper right liver, letting him bleed the nannites into his body in a slow trickle that wouldn’t stop until they consumed him.

No time. Never enough time, even if he was the last Time Lord.

He dragged himself out the door, pressing a kiss against the blue panels of the door as he closed them. Three more steps, he checked the zip on his backpack, put one hand on his favorite Stetson with the hole River had shot in it one faithful day at Lake Silencio, and he jumped into the Rift with a, “Geronimo!”

What he saw there terrified him. He was no different that what he remembered from so long ago. What he’d run from for countless centuries. This time it surrounded him, seduced him, haunted him, chased him to the edge of madness. Truth and impossibility collided. Lies were sweet and time was merciless. He would be the end of all things — or the beginning. Or both. Or nothing and nothingness. Run. Run. Run!

He was lost. He was nothing. Or everything. He was. Or he wasn’t.

Then, he had fingers. And they clutched at an edge. Maybe he should pull himself up?

He staggered a bit at the top. When reality returned and he was something once again, the pain hit like a 51st century cartoon coyote getting hit with a galactic sized anvil. Twice. Planet Acme was really very unpleasant.

But this wasn’t unpleasant. This planet was impossible.

He smelled the air here. Silver and Galienicium and Forthian desert moss. Somehow, somewhere, somewhen there was a version of Gallifrey that had been untouched. River had told him when she was very young and he was very old, that she would like to be put to rest on Gallifrey.

Neither of them were fond of resting. Which had often been a very, very good thing.

It had been more than an idle thought. She’d repeated it, over and over again, in the quiet of nights as she grew older and he younger. Not when they were running for their lives, but when they were making happy memories to comfort them both when death came near. From the moment that they met, when their bond was weaving slowly and delicately and impossibly strong. After their marriage, that insane adventure, their bond was strong enough to break slowly, with slippery delicacy that left them both mostly sane until the moment that it would finally fracture. An impossible thing for a Time Lord, much less two. But his River, his brilliant bespoke psychopath, she’d done it. And one day soon — she would no longer fill the emptiness in his mind.

He’d loved her and he had to let her go. And she’d told him where. He’d known when. But how? How was another matter entirely.

Then Rose Tyler ran toward him, an old bond flared to life, throbbing in a different place within the vastness of his mind than the ghost of the bond to his wife. Rose swept him up in her familiar unfamiliar arms and he collapsed into her for a precious eternity, the echoes of a younger mind starbursting in sorrow and exultation at the feel of her again.

His clone — no…his brother was also there, looking at him with far far too much knowledge of how intensely he felt. For years, their unique bond flickered in and out of existence like interuniversal static. He knew that more of his life than he was comfortable with must have been broadcast to this copy of an old self. In the last moments of his regeneration he had felt an echo of his own pain as this other self writhed and screamed a universe away.

Now, they shared words, yes. But it was more than that. Loss and joy and pain and pain and pain. His brother may be mostly human, but perhaps that made him understand even more how deeply it hurt to be involved and to care and to risk everything over and over again. And Rose, Rose always saw more of him than anyone else except River. That why he feared her so.

He told them he was dying. Not hard to figure out, what with the coughing and regeneration energy already boiling in his gut.

_We go through lives far too quickly, brother. This one will not be easy. There is still the Valeyard…_

_Yes, yes, brother! I know. I worry. But it cannot be helped. I can’t go throwing myself into a convenient black hole or get my head chopped off when the universe is at risk unless I show up to defuse the Silence and surrender my name._

There was a long mental silence that took no time at all. Understanding like this was almost painful, in that it no longer existed in his universe. It was the rarest, most beautiful thing in existence. It ached.

_Do not regenerate in anger, brother. Remember that you are loved._

Rose did not hear all of this, but love was in her eyes as well as her Doctor’s, his impossible brother. He read their timelines, and the beauty of it, the struggle and the bliss of it was too beautiful to stare at for long.

When he pulled River’s cube out of his backpack, it felt right. Those timelines didn’t just shift and flow around the event, they sang. River laughed in his mind, joyful and sad and ever ever curious. "This, this is my wife. This is River Song."

“Your wife!” The mostly-human Doctor squealed while Rose simply held her breath, staring at the box with a strange fascination.

Her smile turned wry fairly quickly. “I didn’t think it could be done, but really, Doctor, I can’t see you marrying a computer. Who was she?”

He tried to stop the look of desperate sadness that flickered over his face, but his control was at its limits. Rose took a step forward, and he was unable to resist.

“She is…she, she was…” Tears formed and streamed down the Doctor’s face, and Rose knew what to do, wrapping her arms around the Time Lord and holding him to her, letting him cry into her shoulder. In another moment, he felt his brother’s long arms encase them both, a storm of tears between the lot of them. The bonds he’d resisted for so long flared for a brilliant, impossible moment, full and strong and tying him to this universe in a way that he could not fight. His life, the long long years since he’d been the other man poured through the connection, and he could feel every laugh and flinch and the deep sorrow of both his brother and this woman they loved that he was not there with them. And their lives, full of frustration and hope and brilliant intimacy and the comfort of presence that he could never enjoy, all of that experience filled his hearts almost to overflowing. The one adventure he could never have, now held in his mind in brilliant living color, to be taken out and cherished if he ever survived the battle to come. He broke away, gasping, clutching the cube and knowing that River too, had felt all of that. That she was ready, throbbing in his mind.

“Your TARDIS isn’t quite right, is she?”

His brother answered, scratching his neck and rocking on his heels, staring sharply at River’s cube and listening with intensity that wasn’t purely human. “It’s an ‘it’. Not a she. That’s the problem. I mean, it should be a she, but she isn’t, she’s an it, which is the problem.” The Time Lord Doctor recognized the babbling. Still did that. Bad habit, but useful.

Rose huffed. “It’s not the same. We go precisely where we set the coordinates. But that’s not always where we need to be.”

He looked at Rose, his hearts beating so fast. “You are brilliant, Rose Tyler. You are so remarkably brilliant for a human. No, wait…” He looked closer. “Not quite human anymore. Not only. Not just.”

She gave him her tongue-touched grin, and he ached with feelings that cracked and bled with remembered need. “I fit better now. And my forever matches his. Helps to have the brain to see what he sees too. Bad Wolf can be dead useful, when the Atraxi are mucking about looking for some mass murderer or there are fish vampires in Amsterdam. Or to know that our TARDIS needs to be more…more….more something! Or things here will go pear shaped before long.”

He swallowed the lump in his throat. “Well, my old girl was always a bit insane. Wonderfully so, but that’s why they’d put her in a museum. Uncontrollable, she. Grown from the original, the rumors said, and rumors are usually dead-on right. She…she contains all of them, in a way. Everything. She was also the Bad Wolf. And she gave birth to River, in her fashion. And so…”

He held up a blue cube, with lightning that flared over the surface in phosphorescent green patterns that swirled with a hypnotizing impatience.

“River was meant for more. She is a child of the TARDIS.”

His brother blinked at him, already understanding, but unable to react. Rose though, Rose became golden, eternal. Rose became the Bad Wolf once more. She reached out, and touched the cube that was River Song, and he said goodbye to his wife.


	4. Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bad Wolf is omniscient, so she gets first person, of sorts. Present tense, because omniscient beings from the Time Vortex always have tense troubles. Updated with help from TheDoctor10_11

_I am the Bad Wolf. We are the Bad Wolf. We touched the cube and our soul was joined, and all of time and space and reality can be seen, but is sheltered for the minds within not to burn like moths in the flame._

_He is so beautiful. Both of him. So many beautiful, terrible possibilities. So much work to do. So many secrets. So many times he needs us. So many Doctors to save._

_They are terrified. Both of him. They fear us, they love us._

_I blink, and let her speak. She must. She refuses anything less._ “Hello Sweetie. This is fascinating. Much better than being stuck a lifetime or three in that computer. Dead boring after a bit, though the spa was a nice touch. This is…all of time and space. It’s so very beautiful. So very very…” _A sigh, and she speaks as well._ “Never enough time, is there? Even though I could see every atom, every moment. You never get enough time with any of us.”

_River Song’s Doctor opens his mouth. Closes it, then opens it again, pressing ever forward._ “There is never enough time. River Song. Rose Tyler.” _He swallows, and this is so hard for him. He thinks he’s a coward, but we know better._ “I love you. Both of you, all of you. I never can say it when it needs to be said.”

_Rose’s Doctor is crying silently, that beautiful bit of Donna Noble giving him the strength he needs._ “Cowards, both of us. But cowards who love you.”

_My voice, the voice of the Bad Wolf thrums, overlaid human on inhuman, and still tempered to not drive mere Time Lords mad._ “We know, luv. We know all. Now, give us what’s in the bag. She’s said yes. Would have, will do, all of that rot. I say yes too, you impossible man, though you didn’t even give me the chance.” _His eyes shine with relief and sorrow and the aching pain of holding off death instead of embracing it. My Doctor, I would save you from this if I could._

“What’s in the bag, brother?” _Rose’s Doctor asks softly, his hands yank at his hair, pulling hard. He knows he is powerless in this, even though we do it all for him._

_Surprisingly, River’s Doctor does not fumble with the zipper on the ridiculous backpack, his movements graceful for once in this life. He pulls from the depth of the bag a piece of the future, golden and shining, as small as the fist of a child, as large as a galaxy in possibilities - so blindingly bright with complexity._

“That’s an amber gestation pod from Prycolix Seven.” _Rose’s Doctor pipes up without hesitation, a gobsmacked look on his face._ “What are you doing with an amber gestation pod from Prycolix Seven?”

_I speak knowing that yes, this needs saying, or his future will be impossible to confront, the pain impossible to dull even through regeneration. I speak with River’s voice, for that is what he needs to hear for the last time, before the first time._ “I forgive you, Doctor. I know you were waiting for the right time, but it never would have happened. Our lives were too mad. Too terrifically, beautifully tragic. I know this is for the best.”

_River’s Doctor stares at us, tears touched with golden fire tracking down his cheeks. He speaks his own words, needing his brother to know, to agree._ “They are my children. River’s and mine. Embryos. Two of them.”

_Rose’s Doctor stands there, eyes flickering madly between his brother and his otherworldly wife._ “Time Lords don’t have twins. Never happened. Never ever.”

_We laugh, a sound sharp enough to threaten to cleave the sky itself._ “Never say never ever. But no, not twins. Two separate zygotes. One from the very first time, and one from the very last. Did you think I didn’t know, Sweetie? I always knew. I still loved you. And them. The possibility of them.”

_River’s Doctor looks at his brother, because he can not look at me, at the Bad Wolf, and stay sane another moment._ “I had thought to ask you to build a Loom. To give them a chance. There was no other way, no human could gestate a Time Lord, much less two.”

_The pod was so very light for the weight of its potential. It was nothing to lift it from his too-tight grasp and spin it through the shimmering air to cup it in the palm of my hand._ “I’m not human, husband.”

_We look at Rose’s Doctor and wait._ “Penny in the air.”

_Universes pause for a quanta of time, as possibilities align. We already know the answer. But does the Doctor?_

_He nods, a smile touching his lips._ “I love being a father, this time ‘round. Much less stuffiness and expectations, much more hot fudge and silly hats.” _He turns to his brother,_ “But no cowboy hats.”

“You’d have liked the fez. The fez was cool.”

“Boys!” _That was River and Rose, unamplified except in exasperation. The Bad Wolf has too much fun laughing within._

“Thank you,” _one of the Doctors said._  
“Thank you,” _one of the Doctors answered._

_I, Bad Wolf, speak softly in this sweet moment._ “I bring life.”

_The amber glows bright enough to outshine both suns in the sky, as it presses against my womb and then transfers within. Each potential finds a home, and two mothers waiting to care for them both. One to give them life, the other to teach them the stars._

_Bad Wolf cries. Tears of glowing fire, diamond dust and dreams._ “They are so beautiful, Sweetie. So incredibly beautiful. They have your eyes, both of them.”

“Are they ginger?” _River’s Doctor steps closer, touching her arm, pulling her toward him and cupping her cheek in his hand._ “I’d always hoped they would be ginger.”

_He didn’t wait for an answer, pulling me into a kiss. Kissing River, kissing Rose, kissing a future he thought he could never ever touch again. I breathe into him, just enough to give him strength and time and hope for what the Doctor must do. I also knock that damn cowboy hat from his head, plunge fingers into his hair, give him something to remember from us._

_I pull away, and look in those eyes, eyes reflecting the fire and time in mine. The Doctor and his Bad Wolf._ “You are never alone, Doctor.”


	5. Five

Watching another man snog your wife is never a fun thing. Not that it had ever happened to him before. And really there were circumstance - the man was another version of himself after all - and his wife was currently possessed by an impossibly powerful entity made from Time itself, combined with the other man’s body-less wife. But it was still definitely, positively, most assuredly, NOT fun.

The last few minutes would be held static in his enormous brain for a very long time, brought out and examined, polished to a high lustre as every moment was assessed for meaning. Rose kissing the eleventh version of himself — who was about to die. He was going to become a father again — he and Rose had talked about more children later on, they had a good long time yet of childbearing years, given their genetic changes, so no need to rush. But having Rose carry his brother and River Song’s mostly Gallifreyan offspring? Raising them in a parallel reality never to see their father again? Oh, this was so very him.

And along with everything else, all the madness which was guaranteed the moment they’d stepped out on to the surface of a planet that should not exist in this or any other reality, something was apparently wrong with his new TARDIS.

He’d been in denial, really. It functioned, and well at that. It got him exactly where he told it to go. It bonded to his and Rose’s thought signatures with an efficient, pleasant demeanor, with the barest hint of pleasure when it performed well. It was, to all extents, a very good TARDIS. Like a dog that fetched you a ball was a very good dog. But he didn’t want a very good dog. He wanted a dog who knew when to disobey him. He wanted a brilliant dog who would take him interesting places that needed just a bit of help. But that wouldn’t likely kill off members of his family with alarming speed. So not TOO interesting. At least not while the children were quite so young and couldn’t sprint at full capacity.

He was doing a rather stellar job for the last two point five seven seconds of ignoring his wife being snogged by another man, when his mental shields rang a five-alarm bell and his bond with both Rose and his brother and the odd pale thread to River Song all thrummed with harmonious meaning and the memories flooded into his mind. Memories unshielded by the Void or the will of a thoroughly distracted Time Lord. There was the pain and joy and longing and wonder of centuries, the distilled bits and pieces that he’d treasured or tortured himself with, turned over and over in his mind while he wasn’t running fast enough or while he’d brooded on clouds or in abbeys or…dear, the Eleventh was quite good at brooding, wasn’t he? He hadn’t needed to try and invade his brother’s thoughts for bits of useful information on the creation of those children — not that he’d wanted every detail — but the memories came to him as though looking for a bastion of safety in a terrifying world.

So he knew very well where that Doctor was headed. He knew that Doctor’s worst fears, because they had been his own once, had been for a very very long time. The good part was, in the onslaught of information, he hadn’t observed enough to be able to tell who had ended that epic kiss — River-Rose/Bad Wolf, or the Eleventh. But it was River’s sassy voice that cut into the silence as though with an axe. “You are never alone Doctor.”

Her eyes turned to him then, Rose’s amber eyes turned golden and unearthly bright and somehow also green and full of secrets. Those eyes pierced him, gave him clear instructions echoed in her words. “Take care of them, and I’ll take care of you — always Doctor.”

She then stepped back and raised a hand, snapping Rose’s pink-tipped fingers. The TARDIS, his and Rose’s young, boring, stable TARDIS, materialized soundlessly next to the Bad Wolf, disguised seamlessly as a red tinted boulder the size of garden shed. River spoke once more, her tears bright in his Rose’s eyes and mirrored in the tear-streaked face of the Eleventh, his lost brother. “You were worth it, my love. Don’t let anyone, not even yourself, tell you any differently.”

The Bad Wolf began to glow, golden fire swirling in a thick cloud over Rose’s skin, bits of blue and green sparkling among the flames. She spoke with a voice of such power, he felt it in his mind, his heart, his bones. She was beautiful and terrible and he loved her.

“All those legends about the first of the TARDIS. You read them all as a child, ate them up like candyfloss. The tales that they came from another reality. That they had to be gifted with a soul. All so much claptrap, you thought.” She smiled that wry twist of her lips, a bit of River and Rose together in sinuous harmony.

Her voice intoned with the power of myth, her eyes blazed warmer than the two suns in the sky, “But at the heart of every rumor is truth. One woman made the difference you see, long before the Time Lords and Rassilon and regeneration. One priestess of Gallifrey was dying after a long life. She was so curious, so very curious.” River’s smile and Rose’s chuckle. The Doctor knew both so well. His heart thumped in his chest slow and sonorous, seduced by the words of a goddess of Time.

“She let herself fall into the Untempered Schism, an offering to the mysterious gods of time and space. Her body landed on another Gallifrey — one without people. But one with another species that tasted the elixir of curiosity. One little plant, bored with journeying across the plains and mountains of a lonely Gallifrey though she was only two hundred years old - that little plant was curious, just as she was. Curious but without soul, without personality, with the ability to ask only what — not why. To copy, not to create. And so that child-like creature touched the dying mind from another Gallifrey, and something new was created.”

She smiled again, a mystery worthy of worship. He could not take his eyes from her, but he could hear, he could feel, his brother weeping golden tears. The green-blue fire in her skin grew bright, spinning and sparking a hundred thousand shades as it began to burn purple and then pink and then a warm, rich red-brown, like fertile soil or solid bricks. The color of a red star that would last a million, billion years, until the very end of the universe. Her voice, that layered voice in which he heard a dozen beloved voices and a thousand he’d doomed to early death. That voice that knew everything.

“TARDIS must be grown. They also must be raised by their mothers, for the soul to transfer, my love. My mother can not follow me now, but I can bring her two children together as one.”

The Bad Wolf touched the outer rocky surface of the TARDIS with the palm of Rose’s hand and the fire leapt, slamming into the time ship as though escaping sorrow it could no longer stand.

He gasped, terrified for a moment that their only way home, back to Earth and their children, had been damaged beyond repair. But faith, something foreign and strangely comforting settled his pulse once again. He had faith in Rose, faith in River Song, and faith in his Bad Wolf. He rushed forward to on instinct, and those instincts served him well as his wife collapsed in his arms, her now-only-amber eyes wide with too much experience and knowledge in too short a time. She stared straight at the Eleventh, words on her lips that she was too tired to give voice aloud to but that thrummed through their bond — all their bonds. “You are always forgiven, Doctor.”

Rose fainted in his arms and he clutched her to him, feeling the bond he’d not realized had been blocked by the Bad Wolf flare incandescent with the life of her. Too much knowledge, too many emotions, no wonder she’d lost consciousness. He breathed in the scent of her, Rose and vanilla and ions and Time - so much Time - Time distilled like a fine whisky, earthy and rich and dangerous.

_Watch, brother._

His head reared up, and he wanted to scream at his brother, to slash at him for not caring about Rose, for leaving them, always leaving both of them. But he looked, and he saw their TARDIS, their perfectly disguised and perfectly boring TARDIS, meld into the shape of a Police Box, though in a very ginger-ish shade of brick-red. The light on the top winked on and off, and his stomach swooped as though the planet had just lost gravity. The bond, that odd bond he’d felt with River Song when he’d seen her die, that bond flared to a new life, one that he’d thought was impossible. A bond like the one he’d shared with his old blue box, the one that would have died in this universe. River Song, mad, loyal, crazy River Song had become the hearts and soul of his TARDIS. A feeling in his mind, pictures and colors and scents that clearly said without words, “Hello Sweeties.”

His mouth was open with shock, and the Eleventh, suddenly so close, pressed a finger to his chin to close it with an audible clack. “You are the luckiest sod in all universes, I hope you know. And you still look ridiculous. Those shoes, that hair!”

He didn’t even glance down at his Chucks, knowing that his brother was simply trying to pick a fight rather than deal with the pain — he did the same thing often enough himself. It was too painful to even speak within their minds, the spoken words were easier, simpler, like a dinghy floating safe above the brewing tsunami below.

“Oi, no wonder you were wearing that hat — you’ve not got any eyebrows! I have marvelous eyebrows. Just how human are you this time around then, mister no eyebrows?”

The Eleventh glared back at him, his eyes like an event horizon. “Twenty eight point six eight three percent homo sapiens. Give or take a gene or two.”

More human than he'd ever been before, not until the metacrisis. His people retreated to Gallifrey to regenerate just so the process introduced no foreign elements, so stray genetic information from impure species. But the Doctor had never bothered to be the good Time Lord, had he. He’d regenerated around humans far too often, incorporating their genes into creating a new self. Making himself more and more human. But so much — so very human his Eleventh. How?

The metacrisis Doctor found his mouth threatening to fall open again, his arms tightening around the still unconscious Rose as the memories assaulted him with the bond, memories of this form, his form, dying — the last person he saw being Rose before he’d corrupted her, a sweet girl on the Powell Estate.

_You visited them all — all of them are within you. Oh Rassilon, the pain — the pain of burning._

_How else could I keep them? I’m not as lucky as you. Though I am a better dresser. You’ve not got the head for hats._ A pause, a drawing of breath, a shutting of doors.

“I told River of all those stories I used to read, tales of the thoughts of a TARDIS — their stories when they were in the mood to share.” The Eleventh spoke words, thoughts too full of pain, and he felt the Eleventh push away, the bond begin to unravel a bit, preparing to shield everyone else from what was coming — his death.

“Sexy sent me dreams, visions, tales no other Time Lord would care to know. She told me about the legend, that the first soul of a TARDIS was that of a Gallifreyan. River was hers, you know. A child of the TARDIS, almost as much as a child of the Ponds.” He coughed, expelling a puff of golden artron energy, then pulled in a deep breath. The metacrisis Doctor shuddered in sympathy, tears held in the corner of his eyes. But he was silent, knowing there was nothing he could do.

The green eyes of his Eleventh form held his own without flinching, needed him to remember this, to understand. “River told me that if she was to die — I think she suspected, even then, that I would be there — had been there…” he shuddered softly, eyes hooded in grief. “River would want that, to see all of time and space and have such adventures - forever. I can rarely promise forever. It seemed impossible, but - there were two children of the TARDIS. Your little coral, and my Melody Pond.”

The Eleventh trailed off, even spoken words too much. Suddenly green eyes opened wide, a smile contained within, and the metacrisis Doctor saw in his mind’s eye a brown-hair girl with a pleasant smirk, a girl who he’d seen over and over and over again throughout his lives, but had never noticed. A girl who should be impossible. Another girl he’d sent away for her protection. Thin lips twisted into a mimic of that smirk. “Sometimes, if I’m very lucky, the impossible seems to like me.”

The metacrisis Doctor, the impossible man on an impossible planet with the impossible gob, didn’t know what to say. “Thank you seems impossibly insufficient, but nothing in Gallifreyan fits either. There are no words deep enough. You’ve left yourself nothing.”

“Nothing to lose. Nothing to risk. Nothing to hand over to what’s coming.” The Oncoming Storm was starting, the dark in his brother’s voice palpable.

“You don’t know that. You don’t know if you will become…if he…if the prophesy….”

The Eleventh laughed, a grating sound. “Why else would the universe be so interested in making sure I never show up on the plains of Trenzalore? Why am I such a coward that I can’t just give it all up? I’ve used up all my regeneration energy, thirteen regeneration, even if there are some odd ones in there. Why can’t I just die?”

The metacrisis Doctor shook his head, remembering a time when he was terrified of death. His brother seemed to be longing for it. “Time won’t let you. You’re hers, and she doesn’t care about sides.”

The Eleventh swallowed, and Rose stirred awake. His brother’s eyes flickered down to her face. “Don’t forget to tell Pete to go back and catch her. Once River — once your TARDIS learns the ropes to travel in time, you have to…"

He rolled his eyes. “You think I’m in idiot? Already done. Rose is a better navigator than I am, after all. First trip that was, right off. You think I don’t know why you left me here with that piece of coral? Why I would’ve stayed, even if Rose hadn’t chosen me, bonded with me? I’m you, you fool! Not closing a time loop like that, not saving Rose from the Void would have collapsed this universe!”

His brother gave a pained smile. “You really are, aren’t you. And I was marvelous as you. No wonder Rose liked me so much.”

The Eleventh glanced at the red box and then down to Rose, and golden sparks flickered across his skin once again, barely held in check. Green eyes scanned the horizon, taking in the mountains that he’d climbed in another universe, in an almost forgotten youth. “Can you feel it, brother? The power here, the potential?”

The metacrisis nodded. “The moment I stepped out of our ship. It’s terrifying.”

“It’s seductive.”

“It’s brilliant!”

“It is.” The Eleventh took a step backwards, back toward the Umtempered Schism, stepping right on that poor cowboy hat. He looked down and grimaced.

Then shrugged his shoulders, and straightened his bow tie. “It’s up to you now, brother. There aren’t any rules anymore, except those you make yourself. Do that which has always been forbidden. Save them. Save as many as you can. Save Mozart. Save Amelia Earhart. Save Prince Wali Dalid and Lu Siu Kai and KR*stYK of Gr’T’. Save someone completely unique who died a plane crash. Save the sum total of those lost to the Bermuda rift. Save the last remnants of Gogola before their sun goes nova. Go out to the edges of the universe and find those who should have had a second chance, and give it to them. Save them all. Here, in this impossible place, everybody lives.”

Then the Eleventh turned and ran. Rose opened her eyes and sat up on her own, staring off into the distance as his brother ran away yet again.

“Who will hold his hand now?” her voice breathed softly, their bond warm and sad and twining even tighter together for the loss of the other.

With a mad wave at them both, the Eleventh Doctor dove into the brilliant light with an echoing, “Geronimo!”

“He’ll always run, my brother.”

She nodded. “And you?”

When he was eight years old, he’d stared into the Untempered Schism and seen the wonder and terror of time and space and the echoes of what he would be. He ran — and kept running. Now, he stared once again at the light of the Untempered Schism, reflected in the golden eyes of Rose Tyler. And this time, he heard a different song.

This time he was inspired.

And in the next moment, the silence in his mind, filled only with the few precious members of his family, began to fill once again with the softest echo of burbling, tumbling masses. He blinked and stumbled, and Rose caught him, her own eyes growing large at this new sensation shared between them.

_Who…who are they all? Hundreds…thousands…._

Around them, the ghostly shells of a city pulsed, the ribbons of their time weaving gold and silver and coppery red in the orange light of the Gallifreyan sky.

“Millions!” He gasped in awe. “There are millions of voices…my people, but, so different. So lively, so…Oh, Rose!”

“So many!” she smiled broadly. “Someday?”

“Potential Rose. The most beautiful thing in creation.”

“And he’ll never get to see?” The sorrow in her voice reflected the regret in his single half-human heart. His brother, if he survived, would be all alone against something that should never, ever be set free. All of this potential could still be crushed from existence by that madness.

There was a flash and with a somewhat familiar flickering, an odd oval capsule appeared with a thump at their feet. About the size of a Mini Cooper and the exact shade of the TARDIS coral, he and Rose both looked at it with open-mouthed shock as the top slid open. Out of the hatch popped a man and a woman, seeming just barely out of their teens.

The man was clearly rude and ginger, “Oi, Gramps, good to see you again!”

The woman had golden skin and lush black hair but her face looked exactly like Rose’s. “Shut up, Ian. You know he’s never seen…”

“They’ll figure it out, Mari. No use not stopping and saying hello. We need the hat anyway.” With that he stepped away from the ship, because it was certainly some kind of time and space ship, the Doctor was certain. Ian bent down and picked up the crushed cowboy hat with a reverent touch and brushed the dirt off of it. “Important, this hat. Got it’s own museum and everything down the timestream a bit.”

“Well, you can thank my driving, you space cowboy. If you were driving we’d have ended up around Mars and then where would the universe be?”

The Doctor was still in a bit of shock, especially as the ghostly buildings, the product of potential timelines too fascinating to credit, were growing more and more solid with each wonderful word being spoken.

“Who…what are you doing here?” Leave it to Rose to actually ask the right question while he was still gobsmacked.

Mari smiled widely, a feral smile that was very familiar. “Hello, Nana Rose. We’re here to find the other Doctor.”

He could feel them, he realized, feel them in his head, loud and so beautifully real. “He’s back on the other side of the Schism…in Trenzalore.”

“We’ve got to get there. Now.” Mari looked serious and determined and heartbreakingly earnest. She looked just like Susan in that moment, and the Doctor grinned madly.

Ian laughed, “Don’t fib, lil’ cousin. You know the reason you are so mad to get to the other universe had very little to do with Grandfather and much more to do with your interuniversal penpal.”

“He’s not my penpal, damn it! He’s my husband.” She stomped her foot and Rose laughed. _She looks just like you when you’ve gone into Donna-mode!_

_Oi!_

The lanky redhead with the prominent chin and rather severe buzz cut — tragedy that! —smiled smugly at the smaller dark girl. “He claims he will be your husband.”

“Argh! Ian Noble-Smith, you are such an annoying little arse!”

“You are so going on this trip for the star-crossed romance of it. I know it, you know it, he knows it and even the Nanas knows it. Doesn’t mean I can’t annoy you about it and make sure he shapes up. You can ditch him you know, time continuum or not. And lighten up! You are such a stick in the mud, Mari Noble-supposedly-Harkness.”

“Harkness!” The Doctor squealed. “You…my granddaughter, and grandson, and oh, no..no..no…”

Rose was no help, as she started to giggle uncontrollably.

Through her laughter and his gasps, she managed to betray him. “You better…go before…he tries to put you…in a time lock! Good luck with Jack, you’ll need it!”

Mari bit her lip and Ian laughed, put the cowboy hat on his head and dragged his cousin back toward their odd craft. “We’ve really got to go meet the other Doctor. She’ll need our help on the other side, after the battle. And there’s that pesky Valeyard to deal with.”

Mari swiped at his arm — clearly Ian wasn’t supposed to reveal so much, but it did work to completely stop the Doctor from panicking about Jack doing horrible, messy things with his flesh and blood and instead worrying about something he’d hoped he’d put a universe behind him. That which was sealed within the Medusa Cascade. Within the Rift.

With a last wave, the hatch closed, and the pod lifted off the ground with a humming energy that felt strangely familiar. Faster than they could blink, the pod raced toward the Untempered Schism and dove down into the awesome light, toward another universe at the brink of chaos.

Rose was the one left to say it. “She?”

“What?”

Rose rolled her eyes, “He said ‘she’. ‘She’ll need our help.’ I doubt our grandson said anything that he hadn’t planned on saying. You and your accidental intentional rudeness. Must have gotten passed on.”

“What?”

“Oh, go on, one more time, just for old times sake.”

“What? I’m a girl!”

Rose’s laughter echoed against the buildings that did not yet exist.


	6. Six

He was falling again. Falling through time and space and the great Howling. He was everything and nothing and happy and terrified and suffering and exultant. He was. It was the only thing he could almost be sure of.

Memories unfolded that were not his own. Not completely.

Memories of another reality that he would not touch again.

Memories of people that he’d known and lost and were found again by another him.

There was red. The brilliant red of Donna Noble-Singh’s sari as she danced at her wedding. The red of her hair as she smiled and screamed and ruled a Torchwood meeting with iron control as Pete’s personal assistant. She saved the world over and over, by knowing where the paperclips were kept (paperclips–only thing to keep the power coupled to the Graviton-Stolicon Templification Emitter). Married to a brilliant researcher, she kept him fed and entertained and very loved when she wasn’t shepherding Torchwood staff toward organizational harmony. She was so brilliant, his face ached from smiling. If he had a face. Did he still have a face? Had he ever? Will he?

The Ponds–no, the Williams. Torchwood gobbled them up after the Cybermen incident, leaders of the resistance in Leadworth and environs. Rory and Amelia, still Amelia and their little girl, Harmony Williams. Maya Tyler-Noble’s best friend, with an enormous crush on Matt. Children. Beautiful, brilliant children. Time Lord Children–but not this Williams’. Harmony, not Melody. Still beautiful and brash though. Matt was in trouble, Time Lord or no.

Sarah Jane Smythe. Not quite the same ring. Secretary of Justice under Harriet Jones’ administration. Blustery and wise and never-take-no-for-an-answer and still asking the questions that needed asking. Keeping Torchwood on its toes and honest and going out to lunch frequently with Dr. Taylor, who makes her giggle and with Donna, where they share secrets on how to take over the universe.

Martha Jones-Smith. Different Smith, but still Smith. This Smith has a good handshake and a brilliant mind for particle physics and makes Martha smile almost as wide as Rose. Rose’s smile is still the best though. Wide enough to never end, to devour him in its happy simmering shine, the Wolf under the surface. He’s seen every expression on her face, both of him, but that smile stops his hearts or heart every time and then makes it go on beating.

Peri hosting radio in California and Tegan as the wife of the Australian Transportation Minister and Liz at Cambridge. Adric dropping out of the sky and getting him home safe, this time, after fending off the Cybermen, again. Finding Ace on the banks of the Mississippi in the middle of an intra-galactic conference and ready to blow some nasty fellow sky high. Ace getting along too famously with Jackie. Ace tutoring the talented Tony, who has an aptitude for explosive chemistry…

The birth of his children. Extraordinary, terrifying, brilliant. He could stay here, stay warm and happy and hopeful. The feeling burns into his mind as the rest of him churns and threatens to burst apart.

But the Eleventh Doctor hits something feet first and his legs crumple and crack and he screams loud enough to shake Creation even as the rest of his body hits a hard rock wall and then he’s yanked up by the collar and his elbows hit the rocky dirt.

He’s ecstatic. “Elbows! Still got elbows!”

He’s in pain. “But the feet, no feet! Rotten feet! Did I have feet?”

“Your feet have seen better days, Doctor, and you still have the damn bow tie. River always did have a thing for bow ties. I should have remembered that–would’ve saved me a heap of trouble finding you.” His savior in bracers loomed over him in the dusky glow of the Rift, a frown marring movie star features that would take billions of years to change.

“Captain Jack! How are you? I’m dying you know–well, of course you know. You do it far more often than me. Sorry about that. Well, she’s sorry about that. She always wanted to tell you that you know…”

Jack yanked him on to the hard-packed dirt, the glimmer of the Untempered Schism–or simply another Rift–turning the dirt a thousand sparkling colors that shouldn’t be.  
Jack didn’t seem very amused and he was far too coherent–mortals shouldn’t be able to stand the Rift. Oh yeah, Jack wasn’t exactly mortal.

“I know, you idiot. Rose told me. I forgive her.”

“You’ve talked to… what? What?”

“Oh, don’t start that! That’s not your line anyway.” Jack pulled him up off the ground, the light of the Rift flickered around them both, bending away from Jack’s wrongness and swirling around him. That answered why he was sane then. Lucky fellow.

“Thanks for the rescue.” He tried to stand up, but his feet were ruined, unable to support his weight. He knelt awkwardly, trying not to keel over.

Jack stood near, not offering any aid. “I’m not here for you, Doctor. I’m here because my oldest friend, the Last Centurion, asked me to save his daughter.” Jack pointed away from the Rift and toward the wide Plains.

There was a silence filled only with his own harsh breathing as he looked around. In the night sky above, the bright swirling clouds of the Medusa Cascade rippled between the thousands of ships that hovered over the Plains of Trenzalore. What once had been a rockslide at the edge of an empty plain was now full; hundreds, thousands of beings stood still, tense and waiting. The war, this endless war, was coming to a head.

He had dared to leave Trenzalore and the stalemate had broken. With his return, he could no longer avoid the Sontaran troopers, the Cybermen, the countless humans in a hundred different uniforms, the Daleks in the skies; waiting to see when their nannites would either convert him or kill him. A crescent of beings surrounds him, Jack and the TARDIS, a distant ring of people who were terrified of the Doctor.

They are waiting for him to either die or speak.

But there was a little girl standing far too close. Much closer than anyone should risk near the Rift. A little girl surrounded by the Silence, a little girl in an astronaut suit. A woman with an eye patch stands at her side, menacing smile on her lips.

“So here we are, Doctor,” Kovarian calls across the meters separating them, “at the height of an endless, bitter war. Is this what you wanted, Doctor?”

He swallows thickly. “No, but apparently it’s what I’m good at.”

He wants to tell them to take Melody Pond and give her back to her parents–but there’s no undoing that timeline now. In fact, seeing her here, the last thread of his bond to his wife wavers alone in his mind, like a violin string about to snap.  
He’d wanted to die. He’d wanted to let Trenzalore burn, let someone else deal with the madness of war.

There was no one else.

But now he knows how River Song knew his name and he knows that, one more time, he must unleash The Moment.  
Kovarian opens her mouth to respond, but an energy net descends over her and her Silent guard. With a flare of light, all of the tall figures in the group disappear, leaving only the scared little girl in the astronaut suit.

Another figure hops up from the ground and a woman throws back the hood of a cloak that was almost invisible. She began a bit of a victory dance that was very familiar. “Brilliant! A cloaking… cloak. Invisibility cloak. Very Harry Potter… is that?”

“Hello Doctor,” Clara Oswald waves smugly and shouts, “You aren’t getting rid of me so easily.”

The quiet murmur of grumbling escalated to a roar as the assembled hoards noticed something had changed. No one was making a move–not here, with the Fog of Truth embedded in the atmosphere. No one could lie and no one could risk a wrong move. Not when legends swirl thick and heavy around this impossible situation.

Clara Oswald stepped forward and took the hand of Melody Pond, bending down and speaking words he couldn’t hear. Clara would say something to calm her. Clara should be back on Earth, safe and sound in 2013.

Jack chuckled softly. “She’s a beauty, isn’t she? Always was good with the kids. An expert at interrogation, but never cruel.” The Doctor turned to face Jack, mouth open. Jack shrugged. “Yes, I know her. Clara Oswald was a Time Agent, you know. I worked with her often. Not this Clara–but a Clara, a Clara Oswald that saves the 14th Doctor.”

The Doctor closes his eyes, wanting to simply curl up on the ground in a ball. Still not done. “Why risk my Clara? She didn’t need to be here, to see this.”

He felt arms under his thighs and around his back and Jack picks him up easily, carrying him farther from the Rift and closer to the woman and girl waiting at the edge of the multitude. “You know this meeting had to happen, Doctor. I was told about it a long time ago. And I was told that Clara Oswald was there when a little girl needed a hand to hold and Clara certainly wasn’t going to let River… let Melody go through this alone. You either, sweet cheeks.”

All too soon they stood together, a tiny group of four surrounded by tanks and guns and armor plates and the buzzing sound too many voices whispering in the distance. Just one soldier with an itchy trigger finger and Armageddon would erupt.

Jack eased the Doctor down to the ground, where he sat with a thump and tried to ignore the blood collecting in his boots from crushed bones and the whispering of a million nannites trying to infect his brain and make him a bloody Dalek. Regeneration throbbed under his skin, itching to remake him, but he still wasn’t sure it was enough to give him another full regeneration, Jack’s claims about a 14th him notwithstanding. He was pretty sure Jack would lie through his teeth if Rory Williams asked him to–and Rory would do anything for his Melody.

“Melody Pond, it’s nice to meet you.” The Doctor nodded up at the little girl, still trapped in the astronaut suit behind a glass helmet. The Doctor dug in his pocket for his sonic and clicked it once, raising the visor so the little girl could breathe real air–albeit Trenzaloran air–in the moment before all hell broke loose.

The little girl looked at him with wide eyes–Amy’s eyes. “You’re the Doctor, aren’t you?”

“I am.” The last threads of their bond sang in his mind. He blinked back tears that she wouldn’t understand.

“You’re supposed to be this evil man. I’m supposed to kill you, but you really aren’t that impressive, you know.”

He wrinkled his nose in offense and then laughed. Even brought up with such vitriol, deprived of everything she should have had, she was amazing, this girl.

“No, I’m not too impressive at the moment.”

“And what kind of name is ‘The Doctor’? I mean, you’re supposed to be someone bent on galactic mayhem. That always seemed a bit odd to me, something that didn’t add up at all. What’s your real name?”

“I don’t tell just anyone my real name, Melody.”

“How do you know mine then? They don’t usually call me that, but I remember it. They just usually call me, ‘The Agent’ or ‘The Girl’. Bit like ‘The Doctor’, isn’t it? Do you know me, Doctor?”

Those eyes, they were going to kill him. “Yes, my girl. I know you. You are wonderful. You are going to get away from them and live your life and be amazing.”

“Am I going to kill you, Doctor?” She seemed resolute and only mildly distressed by the odd surroundings, but there was a glimpse of a desperate sadness in this little girl.

“I’m already dying, Melody. You won’t have to kill me, I promise. I’m dying and soon enough I’m going to explode. It’s going to be pretty cool actually, but I don’t want anyone around to get hurt when I do.” He glanced up at Clara, who had tears in her eyes, and then he twitched non-existent eyebrows at Jack, who nodded sagely, tapping his Vortex Manipulator.

The little girl blinked at him, mouth partially open in shock as she licked dry lips. “That’s sad, Doctor. If I’m not going to kill you, what am I going to do with myself?”

“Anything you want, Melody Pond, anything at all.” If only she’d taken his advice and stayed far, far away.

She smiled shyly. “What if I don’t want you to die, Doctor? I don’t want them to win.”

The fire was in his blood, leaking out in golden tendrils in his hands, his neck, coming out with each breath. Melody’s eyes widened, “What’s happening to you, Doctor?”

“Don’t worry, Melody. You are like me. This might happen to you someday. You’ll die,” tears finally escaped him and he wished he had the strength to cup her cheeks and brush her own tears away, "...and you’ll be remade. You can fix it. It’s easy, you’ll see.”

“I’m scared, Doctor.”

“I know. That’s ok. I’m scared too, but I’m going to give you something I haven’t given anyone else in a very, very long time, Melody. Something that you’ll need someday, something that you can’t share with anyone else, ever."

She nodded, wide-eyed, and he prepared to do something he’d sworn never to do. The Moment was waiting to be triggered again, waiting to undo reality sealed inside the Rift, here on the edge of the Medusa Cascade. Sealed with a word he’d rejected long ago.

“I’m going to tell you my name.” He learned forward and she leaned down awkwardly in her heavy suit. His forehead touched hers and his lips whispered so softly, only she could hear him speak his name.

She smiled, her eyes alight with curiosity and wonder and the spark that made her something extraordinary.

The world seemed to pause, completely still, like all sound was cut off, all movement stopped.

Time fractured.

Before the rip opened too far, Jack Harkness wrapped his arm around the little astronaut and snapped a handcuff on Clara’s wrist before punching the button on the vortex manipulator.

And just like that, the Doctor was alone.

Except for all the solders, who were beginning to look distinctly like they were about to shoot.

Good thing he was dying then.

He shouted into the air, “You’d better go, you lot. It’s going to get a bit dicey right about now. Time is about to collapse you see!”  
There was a general buzz around him of shouting and bluster, but he ignored it all. He was puzzled.

The last bond with River should have broken, leaving him unstable, insane, and potentially deadly to the universe.

But it was still there. There was still a moment left with her, somewhen.

Voices, whispers in his mind bloomed in being. Bonds simmered bright. His brother. Rose.

Echoes of something impossible. People who were like him, somewhere.

He smiled.

Fire erupted from hands and face, beginning to consume him. His body collapsed on the Plains of Trenzalore, to the sounds of cannon fire, lasers searing the earth and the chants of the more violent species in existence engaging in their favorite pastime–war.

But their war would finally end. The light of the artron fire grew brighter and brighter as the Eleventh Doctor faded away.

But something went wrong. Time rippled in waves, bullets slowed down and pulse cannons sped up, sizzling with repeated fire. Firing at targets that were there one moment and gone the next.  
The sky sheared off, the ships overhead fading in and out of existence. The Medusa Cascade began to glow so brightly, the sky turned a thousand colors.

Time turned inside out.

What remained of the Doctor, exploded outward in a cloud of energy, impossible to survive.


	7. Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was conceived of before the 50th. New Gallifrey will exist in the parallel universe – Old Gallifrey is still under Time Lock – but under threat. And there was no War Doctor, so this would be the Doctor’s Thirteenth regeneration (the creation of Tentoo was one). And there are prophesies about what might happen at the Doctor’s Thirteenth regeneration.
> 
> Also - I've always pictured Rupert Grint as the Valeyard - dunno why. And the Doctor I envision as a bit of Claudia Black meets Agam Darshi.

The sounds were quite odd, really. A ringing silence to the ears. And to the mind, the ghosts of voices muttering that simply couldn’t possibly exist. Another mind, clear and strong but tinged with something dark. And one more mental presence - an old friend, babbling incoherently.

The Doctor’s eyes opened to an empty plain. Snow flakes brushed against the Doctor’s toes, where that nasty landing had ripped a hole in once comfortable boots.

Boots which were now far too big.

Alive. Alive was interesting.

Sitting up suddenly sent the world spinning, but there was no one around to comment about the Time Lord who was looking a fair bit green.

“Wondered when you were going to wake up.” Except apparently there was.

The Doctor turned to see a young man with an enviable head of ginger hair flopping over his brow. Actually he looked rather in need of a hair cut. A ragged grey suit of clothes that might have once have been tweed and the sorry, ragged remains of a bow tie. Blue eyes shone with a recognizable energy and the Doctor felt a telltale buzz in the brain that meant…

“Oh no.” Odd voice–rather high this time.

“’Fraid so, my pretty!”

“Pretty? Who are you calling…” the Doctor trailed off, swallowing thickly. High voice. Looking down with a great deal of trepidation, the Doctor saw caramel skin on the hands that barely poked out from ragged shirt sleeve turned a blistered grey. Small hands. Small feet. Very, very baggy clothes and two unfamiliar bits on the front of the chest and a distinct lack of…

“I’m a girl!” She thrust her hands up to her head and wove her fingers through a waterfall of thick hair, bringing it up to her face to see it was so black it was almost blue.

The man chuckled darkly. “Took you long enough, Doctor.”  
“How am I… never happened before… a very rare trait, would have happened before otherwise. Oh bloody buggering hell!”

She slapped a hand over her mouth and blushed. The redhead–oh, a redhead dammit life was unfair–he laughed heartily. “Got a mouth on you, that’s for sure. Maybe it will make things interesting.”

“The TARDIS usually edits my more colorful language, as you should very well know, Doctor.”

The other man gave her a grin that had more than a bit of madness at the edges. She shifted warily, rolling to her knees and standing in her too-big boots. The center of gravity was all wrong, but she was so bloody short this time around she’d make the Seventh look tall. Fucking brilliant, that was.

“The TARDIS, as you can see, isn’t exactly in the best of shape at the moment, is she? Saw her twin explode.”

She’d known that. She’d heard Sexy’s battering of incoherent images this entire time. No wonder she was so disoriented–of course, waking up a different gender after more than a millennium of being perfectly happy as a male also seemed to be very distracting, even for a Time Lord… Time Lady.

Bugger, this was going to a very difficult regeneration to get used to.

“River!” she shouted, impressively loudly actually, for a girl. Perhaps she would have a great mezzo for opera? “I’m a girl because of…”

“She gave up all those lives for you and so here you are, living them. Prophesies are a bit funny like that, aren’t they?” The slight West Country accent seemed warm on the surface, but those words could wound with an icy sharpness.

The Doctor looked at her twin with sharp eyes. Rip open a layer of Time Locks seal with a name, and set off an impossible weapon buried in the heart of a Rift in the center of a nebula and what do you expect? Timestreams have to compensate after all.  
Something has to repair the rip of temporal explosion. Rather than Trenzalore being blown into nothingness and taking most of the Medusa Cascade with it, reality split–two regenerations, two TARDIS, two realities melded together in a haphazard and dangerous fashion.

She shouldn’t exist–or he shouldn’t. And one of them was going to be insane.

She didn’t feel any more mad than usual. Of course, being a she was mad enough in its own way, but not mad enough to be the Valeyard. Was she?

She was suddenly very aware that one TARDIS had exploded, almost destroying this universe and ending his–her–their life before ever setting foot on bloody cursed Trenzalore. One TARDIS, one brilliant blue box was gone from all time and space.  
But there were two Doctors.

She licked suddenly dry lips and tried not to look toward the TARDIS where it hovered on the edge of her mind, the edge of her peripheral vision. She wasn’t very good at sharing, never had been. Ginger likely wasn’t any better.

How fast could she run in this body?

A sudden small pop resulted in two figures appearing between the two slightly impossible Time Lords and their slightly impossible transport. The Doctor felt the bonds to each of them flare. Both of those bonds were impossible.

“Doctor!” Clara yelled, then broke away from her companion and ran pell-mell toward them, her eyes darting back and forth before settling on the redhead. He smiled widely and one look at his face and the Doctor wondered if she had always looked that smug when young girls ran at him full tilt.

Another moment and the Doctors–both of them–were running. She was running to try and intercept Clara, but more than that, she was running to see River one last time. She was shorter than Ginger, but kept pace with him, at least until she looked into River’s face and those sad, sad eyes.

“I’m sorry, my love,” River whispered words that only a Time Lord could have heard. “I’m so, so sorry.” Tears in her eyes, River pressed her vortex manipulator and with another pop, she was gone and pain lanced through the Doctor’s head, sending her stumbling to her knees, screaming. The marriage bond was gone, melting away with a last soft breath. She was still sane, but it still hurt. Her eyes filled with tears and she gasped for breath, only to look up and see Ginger run straight into Clara’s arms for a quick hug, then pull her along at breakneck speed toward the TARDIS.  
He was unaffected.

She struggled to stand, her head ringing with pain and loss and limped forward, each step agony. She tried to call out, but her voice was reedy and thin. Clara looked back over her shoulder, a question in her eyes as she looked back and forth between Ginger and this tiny black haired woman she’d become.

She was going to lose the TARDIS.

He turned his head, giving her a smirk. He had everything–companion, TARDIS, and there was nothing she could do. His madness was held back by the thinnest of threads. She could feel the pulse of darkness in her head–not her own, though there was plenty enough of that, but something bigger, wilder, and not in her own head. She could feel his madness.

The TARDIS, already keening in sorrow at witnessing an explosion that should have ended the universe, her twin sister shattered, she couldn’t sense the wrongness about him. She opened her doors and let Clara and the Valeyard run into the console room. By the time the Doctor had covered just a hundred feet more across the light coating of snow on the plain, the TARDIS had dematerialized, leaving her completely alone.

She sat, shell shocked. There were a hundred separate thought processes blooming in her mind, each battling through the pain to try and offer her options for action based on the circumstances. There was the information on the temperature of the snow she found herself seated on because her legs could not longer hold her. There was the data on the wind chill and the smell of smoke and battle that not even a temporal explosion could completely erase. There was the fact that one of her new molars had three cusps instead of the more usual two. And there was the knowledge that the most dangerous person in the universe, the one that she had been trying to run away from since she was eight years old and first looking into the Untempered Schism, he was here. Now. And she would have to do something about him with no TARDIS, no resources, and no friends.

The light glowing to her left flickered slightly and she turned toward the Rift, expecting nothing but fearing everything. It was rare that good things emerged from a Rift in space and time. The humming of a void-ship was not something that she would ever have welcomed, but the oval capsule floated up out of the Rift with a bouncing grace and touched down a few meters away from her in a matter of seconds. The top slid open and a hatch popped out, and a young man stood up and waved at her.

“Hi there. You wouldn’t happen to be the Doctor, would you?”

“Oi, shut up, you nitwit.” A dark haired, bronze-skinned woman pushed her way out, squeezing next to the pale young man with the unfortunate short haircut and a chin that looked strangely familiar. The woman’s smile, tongue between her teeth, was even more familiar and the Doctor felt her hearts speed up. “Hi Gran! Looks like we were a bit late after all. But no worries, I’m sure we can find your TARDIS again.”

Hope. She never, ever could give it up. She ran away, so long ago, because she had hope. She smiled at this two impossible people, hearts filling again, ready to run again.

Hope was always and ever the Doctor’s inspiration.


End file.
